Ticket to Write: Cool Springs Park still has surprises

Steve Stephens More Content Now

Tuesday

Sep 3, 2019 at 3:45 PM

ROWLESBURG, West Virginia - After many visits to Cool Springs Park, I shouldn’t be surprised by anything I see there. But for just a moment, the small, shaggy donkey chugging head down toward my family like a chubby little locomotive, gave me pause.

The donkey was looking only for a bit of acknowledgment, though. Before he could run headlong into my wife, he veered off between a picturesque pile that once was a steam-powered tractor and an old hatchery pond that seemed to be harboring just one large fish.

My 14-year-old daughter followed the donkey, of course, and, with pets and hugs, gave him some of the attention he apparently craved. (Eeyore has always been her favorite storybook animal.)

The sign atop the general store and restaurant at Cool Springs says the park has been around since 1929 and some of the farm equipment and steam engines strewn around the shady grounds next to the store certainly are older than that.

U.S. 50 runs out front, a winding, two-lane, snakelike ribbon through central West Virginia that is a delight to drive, so long as you don’t get stuck behind a truck navigating the road’s frequent 8% grades. Siri had recommended an alternate, speedier route, but Cool Springs has become a mandatory stop for us on trips through this part of the country.

Cool Springs is one of the only commercial establishments for miles, so many drivers with any kind of need or time to spare, stop in. The store offers gasoline, convenience supplies, a variety of kitschy souvenirs and a willy-nilly, hard-to-categorize collection of other goods. The homestyle restaurant often is busy, although I have never eaten there.

My family and I have wandered the grounds many times, however, marveling at the odd, and oddly mesmerizing, collection of equipment that includes an entire locomotive and several old cabooses on their own track, a giant waterwheel that apparently was once turned by the spring-fed stream near the hatchery and dozens of old tractors and engines dating from the early days of agricultural mechanization. The effect is delightfully surreal, like a Salvador Dali art installation as commissioned by L’il Abner.

The resident critters, too, are an odd assortment and seem to change over the years. This year, in addition to the donkey and one fish, I noticed two peacocks - albinos - which kind of defeats the purpose of peacocks, does it not?

An aggressive turkey also strutted about, pausing only to give the business to a group of motorcyclists making a rest stop.

The bikers seemed amused, if wary. And not a bit surprised.Steve Stephens can be reached at sstephens@dispatch.com.

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